Anaxagoras, also born near Miletus but then living in Athens for a time, agrees with Empedocles, his contemporary, that Parmenides was right

Next we look at Empedocles, who is influenced by his predecessors the Milesians, Pythagoras, Heraclitus as well as Parmenides. Empedocles holds that

If Heraclitus asked the question of the one and the many, Parmenides gives us a rigid answer. He breaks with the method

Heraclitus lived in Ephesus, not far from Miletus, around 500 B.C. Heraclitus is not so much interested to know the causes of

Mathematics is fundamental to the Pythagorean view. First, geometry originated in Egypt but was transformed in Greece. The Egyptians were flooded each

One of my all-time favorites, Pythagoras is in my personal view the key to understanding the metaphysical tradition of ancient Greece. While

The next noteworthy early Greek philosopher, Anaximenes, was an associate and follower of Anaximander. But if I were Anaximander, I would be

Aristotle draws a distinction between the poets who concerned themselves with the gods versus the philosophers who concerned themselves with the investigation

Hesiod and Homer are the earliest Greek writers of the classical period, both of whom wrote in the 8th century B.C. Homer’s

Why have some people sought metaphysics? Being a materialist has a certain reasonability: “What you can detect with the senses exists; everything

Materialists have always existed. Weinberg is nothing new. In the ancient world, materialism was in vogue for hundreds of years. We are

Steven Weinberg, a theoretical physicist at the University of Texas, is a Nobel laureat in physics and has been called the pre-immanent

  I had to smile as I descended into the bowels of my daughters’ room, like Virgil descending into the lowermost circles

Plato’s Phaedo affords what I consider one of the most important philosophical validations that pertains to motherhood. Motherhood is about love: a selfless self-emptying

Aristotle was concerned with human happiness. Aristotle’s word for “happiness” is eudaimonia, which is better translated “flourishing.” An acorn that falls into

One of the most important passages in the whole corpus of western philosophy was written by Plato who describes the final hours

John Paul II develops this illumination of motherhood through the fatherhood of God: “When in union with the apostle, we bow our

In his Letter to Families, John Paul II charts new theological territory, exploring ways that motherhood is made in the image of

I have taught Anaxagoras since my first class as a grad student to the present.  Whenever I teach Plato’s Phaedo and give Socrates’

Pythagoras had female as well as male students.  Pythagoras believed that the soul’s telos is apprehension of order, which is number (ratio, proportion,